action

• nonreligious activities bend universe to service of self

5:4.3God is not only the de­ter­miner of des­tiny; he is man’s eter­nal des­ti­na­tion. All non­re­li­gious hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties seek to bend the uni­verse to the dis­tort­ing ser­vice of self; the truly re­li­gious in­di­vid­ual seeks to iden­tify the self with the uni­verse and then to ded­i­cate the ac­tiv­i­ties of this uni­fied self to the ser­vice of the uni­verse fam­ily of fel­low be­ings, hu­man and super­hu­man.

• best way is right way

12:7.2In all his deal­ings with all his be­ings it is true that the laws of God are not in­her­ently ar­bi­trary. To you, with your lim­ited vi­sion and fi­nite view­point, the acts of God must of­ten ap­pear to be dic­ta­to­rial and ar­bi­trary. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of re­peat­edly do­ing things; and he ever does all things well. You ob­serve that God does the same thing in the same way, re­peat­edly, sim­ply be­cause that is the best way to do that par­tic­u­lar thing in a given cir­cum­stance; and the best way is the right way, and there­fore does in­fi­nite wis­dom al­ways or­der it done in that pre­cise and per­fect man­ner. You should also re­mem­ber that na­ture is not the ex­clu­sive act of De­ity; other in­flu­ences are pres­ent in those phe­nom­ena which man calls na­ture.

• repugnant to divine nature to permit inferior a.

12:7.3It is re­pug­nant to the di­vine na­ture to suf­fer any sort of de­te­ri­o­ra­tion or ever to per­mit the ex­e­cu­tion of any purely per­sonal act in an in­fe­rior way. It should be made clear, how­ever, that, if, in the di­vin­ity of any sit­u­a­tion, in the ex­trem­ity of any cir­cum­stance, in any case where the course of su­preme wis­dom might in­di­cate the de­mand for dif­fer­ent con­duct—if the de­mands of per­fec­tion might for any rea­son dic­tate an­other method of re­ac­tion, a bet­ter one, then and there would the all-wise God func­tion in that bet­ter and more suit­able way. That would be the ex­pres­sion of a higher law, not the re­ver­sal of a lower law.

• proper conduct essential to progress

27:4.2Har­mony is the keynote of the cen­tral uni­verse, and de­tectable or­der pre­vails on Par­a­dise. Proper con­duct is es­sen­tial to prog­ress by way of knowl­edge, through phi­los­o­phy, to the spir­i­tual heights of spon­ta­neous wor­ship. There is a di­vine tech­nique in the ap­proach to Di­vin­ity; and the ac­quire­ment of this tech­nique must await the pil­grims’ ar­rival on Par­a­dise. The spirit of it has been im­parted on the cir­cles of Ha­vona, but the fi­nal touches of the train­ing of the pil­grims of time can be ap­plied only af­ter they ac­tu­ally at­tain the Isle of Light.

• achievement grows out of divine capacity for

28:6.18The uni­ver­sal econ­omy is based on in­take and out­put; through­out the eter­nal ca­reer you will never en­counter mo­not­ony of in­ac­tion or stag­na­tion of per­son­al­ity. Prog­ress is made pos­si­ble by in­her­ent mo­tion, ad­vance­ment grows out of the di­vine ca­pac­ity for ac­tion, and achieve­ment is the child of imag­i­na­tive ad­ven­ture. But in­her­ent in this ca­pac­ity for achieve­ment is the re­spon­si­bil­ity of ethics, the ne­ces­sity for rec­og­niz­ing that the world and the uni­verse are filled with a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ing types of be­ings. All of this mag­nif­i­cent cre­ation, in­clud­ing your­self, was not made just for you. This is not an ego­cen­tric uni­verse. The Gods have de­creed, “It is more blessed to give than to re­ceive,” and said your Mas­ter Son, “He who would be great­est among you let him be server of all.”

• dead theory powerless to transform behavior

34:6.6The dead the­ory of even the high­est re­li­gious doc­trines is pow­er­less to trans­form hu­man char­ac­ter or to con­trol mor­tal be­hav­ior. What the world of to­day needs is the truth which your teacher of old de­clared: “Not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.” The seed of the­o­ret­i­cal truth is dead, the high­est moral con­cepts with­out ef­fect, un­less and un­til the di­vine Spirit breathes upon the forms of truth and quick­ens the for­mu­las of righ­teous­ness.

• achieves strength

48:7.119. Ac­tion achieves strength; mod­er­a­tion even­tu­ates in charm.

• act ours; consequences God’s
• weak indulge in resolutions; strong act

48:7.1311. The weak in­dulge in res­o­lu­tions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the con­se­quences God’s.

• acts of today are destiny of tomorrow

48:7.2624. The des­tiny of eter­nity is de­ter­mined mo­ment by mo­ment by the achieve­ments of the day by day liv­ing. The acts of to­day are the des­tiny of to­mor­row.

• prayer must never be substitute for

91:4.2Prayer must never be so pros­ti­tuted as to be­come a sub­sti­tute for ac­tion. All eth­i­cal prayer is a stim­u­lus to ac­tion and a guide to the pro­gres­sive striv­ing for ide­al­is­tic goals of super­self-at­tain­ment.

• validate prayers by possessing cosmic stamina

91:9.21. You must qual­ify as a po­tent prayer by sin­cerely and coura­geously fac­ing the prob­lems of uni­verse re­al­ity. You must pos­sess cos­mic stam­ina.

• exhaust capacity for human adjustment

91:9.32. You must have hon­estly ex­hausted the hu­man ca­pac­ity for hu­man ad­just­ment. You must have been in­dus­tri­ous.

• believer always acts, never coerces

94:6.6His un­der­stand­ing of the eter­nal pur­pose of God was clear, for he said: “The Ab­so­lute De­ity does not strive but is al­ways vic­to­ri­ous; he does not co­erce man­kind but al­ways stands ready to re­spond to their true de­sires; the will of God is eter­nal in pa­tience and eter­nal in the in­evitabil­ity of its ex­pres­sion.” And of the true re­li­gion­ist he said, in ex­press­ing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to re­ceive: “The good man seeks not to re­tain truth for him­self but rather at­tempts to be­stow these riches upon his fel­lows, for that is the re­al­iza­tion of truth. The will of the Ab­so­lute God al­ways ben­e­fits, never de­stroys; the pur­pose of the true be­liever is al­ways to act but never to co­erce.”

• act ours; consequences God’s

95:4.3This wise man of the Nile taught that “riches take them­selves wings and fly away”—that all things earthly are evanes­cent. His great prayer was to be “saved from fear.” He ex­horted all to turn away from “the words of men” to “the acts of God.” In sub­stance he taught: Man pro­poses but God dis­poses. His teach­ings, trans­lated into He­brew, de­ter­mined the phi­los­o­phy of the Old Tes­ta­ment Book of Proverbs. Trans­lated into Greek, they gave color to all sub­se­quent Hel­lenic re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy. The later Alexan­drian philoso­pher, Philo, pos­sessed a copy of the Book of Wis­dom.

• Zoroaster’s religion one of a.

95:6.3And this new re­li­gion was one of ac­tion—work—not prayers and rit­u­als. Its God was a be­ing of su­preme wis­dom and the pa­tron of civ­i­liza­tion; it was a mil­i­tant re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy which dared to bat­tle with evil, in­ac­tion, and back­ward­ness.

• belief rather than knowledge determines conduct

99:4.5Af­ter all, it is what one be­lieves rather than what one knows that de­ter­mines con­duct and dom­i­nates per­sonal per­for­mances. Purely fac­tual knowl­edge ex­erts very lit­tle in­flu­ence upon the av­er­age man un­less it be­comes emo­tion­ally ac­ti­vated. But the ac­ti­va­tion of re­li­gion is super­emo­tional, uni­fy­ing the en­tire hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence on tran­scen­dent lev­els through con­tact with, and re­lease of, spir­i­tual en­er­gies in the mor­tal life.

• no real religion apart from highly active personality

102:2.7Evo­lu­tion­ary man does not nat­u­rally rel­ish hard work. To keep pace in his life ex­pe­ri­ence with the im­pelling de­mands and the com­pelling urges of a grow­ing re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence means in­ces­sant ac­tiv­ity in spir­i­tual growth, in­tel­lec­tual ex­pan­sion, fac­tual en­large­ment, and so­cial ser­vice. There is no real re­li­gion apart from a highly ac­tive per­son­al­ity. There­fore do the more in­do­lent of men of­ten seek to es­cape the rig­ors of truly re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties by a species of in­ge­nious self-de­cep­tion through re­sort­ing to a re­treat to the false shel­ter of stereo­typed re­li­gious doc­trines and dog­mas. But true re­li­gion is alive. In­tel­lec­tual crys­tal­liza­tion of re­li­gious con­cepts is the equiv­a­lent of spir­i­tual death. You can­not con­ceive of re­li­gion with­out ideas, but when re­li­gion once be­comes re­duced only to an idea, it is no longer re­li­gion; it has be­come merely a species of hu­man phi­los­o­phy.

102:2.8Again, there are other types of un­sta­ble and poorly dis­ci­plined souls who would use the sen­ti­men­tal ideas of re­li­gion as an av­enue of es­cape from the ir­ri­tat­ing de­mands of liv­ing. When cer­tain vac­il­lat­ing and timid mor­tals at­tempt to es­cape from the in­ces­sant pres­sure of evo­lu­tion­ary life, re­li­gion, as they con­ceive it, seems to pre­sent the near­est refuge, the best av­enue of es­cape. But it is the mis­sion of re­li­gion to pre­pare man for bravely, even hero­ically, fac­ing the vi­cis­si­tudes of life. Re­li­gion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s su­preme en­dow­ment, the one thing which en­ables him to carry on and “en­dure as see­ing Him who is in­vis­i­ble.” Mys­ti­cism, how­ever, is of­ten some­thing of a re­treat from life which is em­braced by those hu­mans who do not rel­ish the more ro­bust ac­tiv­i­ties of liv­ing a re­li­gious life in the open are­nas of hu­man so­ci­ety and com­merce. True re­li­gion must act. Con­duct will be the re­sult of re­li­gion when man ac­tu­ally has it, or rather when re­li­gion is per­mit­ted truly to pos­sess the man. Never will re­li­gion be con­tent with mere think­ing or un­act­ing feel­ing.

102:2.9We are not blind to the fact that re­li­gion of­ten acts un­wisely, even ir­re­li­giously, but it acts. Aber­ra­tions of re­li­gious con­vic­tion have led to bloody per­se­cu­tions, but al­ways and ever re­li­gion does some­thing; it is dy­namic!

• defined as › consummation of decision
• defined as › essential to consciousness of Supreme

110:6.17The mo­ti­va­tion of faith makes ex­pe­ri­en­tial the full re­al­iza­tion of man’s son­ship with God, but ac­tion, com­ple­tion of de­ci­sions, is es­sen­tial to the evo­lu­tion­ary at­tain­ment of con­scious­ness of pro­gres­sive kin­ship with the cos­mic ac­tu­al­ity of the Su­preme Be­ing. Faith trans­mutes po­ten­tials to ac­tu­als in the spir­i­tual world, but po­ten­tials be­come ac­tu­als in the fi­nite realms of the Su­preme only by and through the re­al­iza­tion of choice-ex­pe­ri­ence. But choos­ing to do the will of God joins spir­i­tual faith to ma­te­rial de­ci­sions in per­son­al­ity ac­tion and thus sup­plies a di­vine and spir­i­tual ful­crum for the more ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the hu­man and ma­te­rial lever­age of God-hunger. Such a wise co-or­di­na­tion of ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual forces greatly aug­ments both cos­mic re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme and mor­ontia com­pre­hen­sion of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

• defined as › focusing attributes of whole personality

112:2.7The uni­verse fact of God’s be­com­ing man has for­ever changed all mean­ings and al­tered all val­ues of hu­man per­son­al­ity. In the true mean­ing of the word, love con­notes mu­tual re­gard of whole per­son­al­i­ties, whether hu­man or di­vine or hu­man and di­vine. Parts of the self may func­tion in nu­mer­ous ways—think­ing, feel­ing, wish­ing—but only the co-or­di­nated at­tri­butes of the whole per­son­al­ity are fo­cused in in­tel­li­gent ac­tion; and all of these pow­ers are as­so­ci­ated with the spir­i­tual en­dow­ment of the mor­tal mind when a hu­man be­ing sin­cerely and un­selfishly loves an­other be­ing, hu­man or di­vine.

• man does not ascend effortlessly in universe

117:4.7Man­kind does not as­cend ef­fort­lessly in the uni­verse, nei­ther does the Su­preme evolve with­out pur­pose­ful and in­tel­li­gent ac­tion. Crea­tures do not at­tain per­fec­tion by mere pas­siv­ity, nor can the spirit of Su­prem­acy fac­tu­al­ize the power of the Al­mighty with­out un­ceas­ing ser­vice min­istry to the fi­nite cre­ation.

• act ours; consequences God’s

117:5.5Man does not unite with the Su­preme and sub­merge his per­sonal iden­tity, but the uni­verse reper­cus­sions of the ex­pe­ri­ence of all men do thus form a part of the di­vine ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of the Su­preme. “The act is ours, the con­se­quences God’s.”

117:5.6The pro­gress­ing per­son­al­ity leaves a trail of ac­tu­al­ized re­al­ity as it passes through the as­cend­ing lev­els of the uni­verses. Be they mind, spirit, or en­ergy, the grow­ing cre­ations of time and space are mod­i­fied by the pro­gres­sion of per­son­al­ity through their do­mains. When man acts, the Su­preme re­acts, and this trans­ac­tion con­sti­tutes the fact of pro­gres­sion.

• defined as › consummation of decision

117:5.13What man him­self takes with him as a per­son­al­ity pos­ses­sion are the char­ac­ter con­se­quences of the ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing used the mind and spirit cir­cuits of the grand uni­verse in his Par­a­dise as­cent. When man de­cides, and when he con­sum­mates this de­ci­sion in ac­tion, man ex­pe­ri­ences, and the mean­ings and the val­ues of this ex­pe­ri­ence are for­ever a part of his eter­nal char­ac­ter on all lev­els, from the fi­nite to the fi­nal. Cos­mi­cally moral and di­vinely spir­i­tual char­ac­ter rep­re­sents the crea­ture’s cap­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion of per­sonal de­ci­sions which have been il­lu­mi­nated by sin­cere wor­ship, glo­ri­fied by in­tel­li­gent love, and con­sum­mated in broth­erly ser­vice.

• evils of inaction

130:6.3By this time the young man very much de­sired to talk with Je­sus, and he knelt at his feet im­plor­ing Je­sus to help him, to show him the way of es­cape from his world of per­sonal sor­row and de­feat. Said Je­sus: “My friend, arise! Stand up like a man! You may be sur­rounded with small en­e­mies and be re­tarded by many ob­sta­cles, but the big things and the real things of this world and the uni­verse are on your side. The sun rises ev­ery morn­ing to salute you just as it does the most pow­er­ful and pros­per­ous man on earth. Look—you have a strong body and pow­er­ful mus­cles—your phys­i­cal equip­ment is bet­ter than the av­er­age. Of course, it is just about use­less while you sit out here on the moun­tain­side and grieve over your mis­for­tunes, real and fan­cied. But you could do great things with your body if you would has­ten off to where great things are wait­ing to be done. You are try­ing to run away from your un­happy self, but it can­not be done. You and your prob­lems of liv­ing are real; you can­not es­cape them as long as you live. But look again, your mind is clear and ca­pa­ble. Your strong body has an in­tel­li­gent mind to di­rect it. Set your mind at work to solve its prob­lems; teach your in­tel­lect to work for you; refuse longer to be dom­i­nated by fear like an un­think­ing an­i­mal. Your mind should be your coura­geous ally in the so­lu­tion of your life prob­lems rather than your be­ing, as you have been, its ab­ject fear-slave and the bond ser­vant of de­pres­sion and de­feat. But most valu­able of all, your po­ten­tial of real achieve­ment is the spirit which lives within you, and which will stim­u­late and in­spire your mind to con­trol it­self and ac­ti­vate the body if you will re­lease it from the fet­ters of fear and thus en­able your spir­i­tual na­ture to be­gin your de­liv­er­ance from the evils of in­ac­tion by the power-pres­ence of liv­ing faith. And then, forth­with, will this faith van­quish fear of men by the com­pelling pres­ence of that new and all-dom­i­nat­ing love of your fel­lows which will so soon fill your soul to over­flow­ing be­cause of the con­scious­ness which has been born in your heart that you are a child of God.

• do good deeds in secret

131:10.8“Hence­forth will I do my good deeds in se­cret; I will also pray most when by my­self. I will judge not that I may not be un­fair to my fel­lows. I am go­ing to learn to love my en­e­mies; I have not truly mas­tered this prac­tice of be­ing God­like. Though I see God in these other re­li­gions, I find him in ‘our re­li­gion’ as be­ing more beau­ti­ful, lov­ing, mer­ci­ful, per­sonal, and pos­i­tive. But most of all, this great and glo­ri­ous Be­ing is my spir­i­tual Fa­ther; I am his child. And by no other means than my hon­est de­sire to be like him, I am even­tu­ally to find him and eter­nally to serve him. At last I have a re­li­gion with a God, a mar­velous God, and he is a God of eter­nal sal­va­tion.”

• do good deeds in secret

140:6.11When Je­sus heard this, he said: “Be will­ing, then, to take up your re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and fol­low me. Do your good deeds in se­cret; when you give alms, let not the left hand know what the right hand does. And when you pray, go apart by your­selves and use not vain rep­e­ti­tions and mean­ing­less phrases. Al­ways re­mem­ber that the Fa­ther knows what you need even be­fore you ask him. And be not given to fast­ing with a sad coun­te­nance to be seen by men. As my cho­sen apos­tles, now set apart for the ser­vice of the king­dom, lay not up for your­selves trea­sures on earth, but by your un­selfish ser­vice lay up for your­selves trea­sures in heaven, for where your trea­sures are, there will your hearts be also.

• necessary for Josiah’s healing

164:3.142. As the blind man had not asked for heal­ing, and since the faith he had was slight, these ma­te­rial acts were sug­gested for the pur­pose of en­cour­ag­ing him. He did be­lieve in the su­per­sti­tion of the ef­fi­cacy of spit­tle, and he knew the pool of Siloam was a semisa­cred place. But he would hardly have gone there had it not been nec­es­sary to wash away the clay of his anoint­ing. There was just enough cer­e­mony about the trans­ac­tion to in­duce him to act.

• eternal realities are result of righteous striving

170:2.76. Je­sus taught that eter­nal re­al­i­ties were the re­sult (re­ward) of righ­teous earthly striv­ing. Man’s mor­tal so­journ on earth ac­quired new mean­ings con­se­quent upon the rec­og­ni­tion of a no­ble des­tiny.

• weigh consequences of

192:2.8Then Je­sus turned to James, ask­ing, “James, do you trust me?” And of course James replied, “Yes, Mas­ter, I trust you with all my heart.” Then said Je­sus: “James, if you trust me more, you will be less im­pa­tient with your breth­ren. If you will trust me, it will help you to be kind to the broth­er­hood of be­liev­ers. Learn to weigh the con­se­quences of your say­ings and your do­ings. Re­mem­ber that the reap­ing is in ac­cor­dance with the sow­ing. Pray for tran­quil­lity of spirit and cul­ti­vate pa­tience. These graces, with liv­ing faith, shall sus­tain you when the hour comes to drink the cup of sac­ri­fice. But never be dis­mayed; when you are through on earth, you shall also come to be with me.”

• Jesus’ disciples always active, positive

194:3.11Pen­te­cost, with its spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, was de­signed for­ever to loose the re­li­gion of the Mas­ter from all de­pen­dence upon phys­i­cal force; the teach­ers of this new re­li­gion are now equipped with spir­i­tual weapons. They are to go out to con­quer the world with un­fail­ing for­give­ness, match­less good will, and abound­ing love. They are equipped to over­come evil with good, to van­quish hate by love, to de­stroy fear with a coura­geous and liv­ing faith in truth. Je­sus had al­ready taught his fol­low­ers that his re­li­gion was never pas­sive; al­ways were his dis­ci­ples to be ac­tive and pos­i­tive in their min­istry of mercy and in their man­i­fes­ta­tions of love. No longer did these be­liev­ers look upon Yah­weh as “the Lord of Hosts.” They now re­garded the eter­nal De­ity as the “God and Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus Christ.” They made that prog­ress, at least, even if they did in some mea­sure fail fully to grasp the truth that God is also the spir­i­tual Fa­ther of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual.